KATHMANDU — In the isolated kingdom of Lo Manthang, tucked away in Nepal’s Himalayas, ancient structures stand tall on arid lands that only allowed tourists in from the late 1990s.…
Harvard-trained ethnobotanist and host of the popular podcast Plants of the Gods, Mark Plotkin is no stranger to psychedelic plants. But many people across the world, particularly in countries where…
PHNOM PENH — Eight people, including two Cambodian Forestry Administration officials, have been charged by U.S. federal prosecutors for their alleged involvement in an international monkey smuggling ring. One of…
To convert around 80% of the Brazilian Amazon into environmental conservation areas would cost Brazil just over half of what the European Union spends to maintain all of its own…
MUARA JAMBI, Indonesia — In a wood-plank house on the banks of the Batang Hari River, a dukun, or traditional healer, named Siti Hawa, 62, handles a grass-like plant topped…
As a best-selling author, the co-founder of the award-winning Amazon Conservation Team, and an acclaimed public speaker, Mark Plotkin is one of the world’s most prominent rainforest ethnobotanists and conservationists.…
HUMBANG HASUNDUTAN, Indonesia — Indonesia has an enormous variety of plants with medicinal properties, and traditional herbal medicines such as jamu are still widely used by both urban and rural…
Nestled between steep mountains and a sandy shoreline that slopes into the Solomon Sea, the village of Baniata is testimony to resilience and self-sufficiency. Located on the remote southern shore…
Taking a pill is what gets many people around the world through physical pain or other forms of ill health. Many others took to more traditional plant-based remedies for their…
In spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic took off in the United States just as the breeding season for the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes) commenced. Disease is always at the forefront…
For more than a year, the world has closely followed the development, approval and deployment of various coronavirus vaccines that could bring an end to the global pandemic, debating every…
JAKARTA — More than half of Indonesian medicinal plant species won’t be able to grow in most of their current range by 2050 due to climate change impacts, according to…
Since Lucely Pio was a little girl, she has been collecting medicinal plants in the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savanna. At 5, she walked through the grasslands and forests of the…
In 2019, XPRIZE Rainforest opened its doors and challenged the world to develop new biodiversity assessment technologies by offering a $10 million prize for the best one. The consequent mobilization will extend…
Wade Davis is a celebrated anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and author who has written thought-provoking accounts of indigenous cultures around the world. These have ranged from The Serpent and the Rainbow…
MINDANAO, Philippines — In his 52 years, Vicente Bandojo says, he has never been admitted to a hospital or consulted a medical doctor for any ailment that afflicted him. Bandojo…
Wary of Western medicine and of the prejudice and neglect they say they suffer at hospitals, Amazon's Kokama people decided to turn to traditional healing practices, administered by shamans. The Kokama were the first Indigenous group in Brazil to be infected with COVID-19, and to date there have been more than a thousand confirmed cases and 60 deaths within the community.
In early July, the Ashaninka indigenous people from Brazil launched a fundraising campaign to encourage food production in communities living near their territory. The “Ashaninka for the Peoples of the Forest” campaign plans to raise $200,000 to distribute food, farming tools and fishing gear to 1,800 local families, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
Throughout the waters surrounding Indonesia, a porous tubular creature sits fixed onto coral reefs, its plain appearance hiding a potentially lifesaving secret. Researchers recently found that this sponge produces a…
A valuable Atlantic Forest reserve and the historic setting of the discovery of Brazil, the land of the Pataxó is suffering from the illegal logging of fine woods used to produce handicrafts.
André Baniwa is one of the oldest indigenous leaders working in the Upper Rio Negro region of the state of Amazonas. He spoke with Mongabay about school education, generation of income, indigenous people in public life and his people’s concept of “good living” based in interculturality.
Created by an indigenous anthropologist, the Centro de Medicina Indígena Bahserikowi offers residents of the Brazilian Amazonian city of Manaus traditional healing and protective treatments by shamans from the Dessana, Tuyuka and Tukano ethnicities.
As Indonesia’s forests go up in smoke, the world may be losing a lot more than we currently understand.
“I once asked a Matapí elder if he could spare an hour or two to tell me about what palms he knew, and how he used them,” says Rodrigo Cámara-Leret,…
The World Health Organization (WHO) approved the inclusion of traditional Chinese medicine in the revision of its influential International Classification of Diseases for the first time on May 25, touching…
PAKULI INDUK, Indonesia — In a remote village on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi lies a small garden of near-mythic repute — a place whose stewards grow not mere plants, but…
The natural world is full of medicines, many of which have been tapped by pharmaceutical companies to derive products that adorn our drugstore shelves and bathroom cabinets. But humans aren’t…
Today, Malaysia is one of the world’s biggest producers of palm oil. Together with Indonesia, the Southeast Asian country contributes some 85 percent of the global supply. But this has…
TENA, Ecuador - Benjamin Mamallacta Alvarado and his wife Dalia Tapuy Calapucha were both recently sick, but instead of going to a pharmacy to pick up medication, they went into their…
Caterpillars infected with Cordyceps sinensis, mostly whole. Photo by William Rafti of the William Rafti Institute. Cordyceps sinensis, commonly known as caterpillar fungus, may be a groundbreaking new treatment for…
